Poll: Which do you think allows people to learn aikido more effectively?

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[AikiWeb System]

AikiWeb Poll for the week of September 16, 2007:

Which do you think allows people to learn aikido more effectively?

I don't do aikido
Success
Failure


Here are the current results (http://www.aikiweb.com/polls/results.html?poll_id=396).

[Mark Uttech]

This poll most likely will reveal how the thinking of the world has changed, is changing, from the 1950's.

In gassho,

Mark

[dps]

Failure and lots of it.

David

[Ryan Sanford]

If I succeeded easily in Aikido more often than I failed miserably (which I do quite often, thank you), then I would have quit out of boredom a while ago.

[JAMJTX]

I wish there were another chioce - for a combination of success and failure.

I like to try new technqiues and expeirment with variations that I dream up. I probably learned more from the times I realized they weren't such great ideas.

We need some success to keep encouraged about training and interested in the art. But it's the failures that make you train harder and force you to practice more.

[Amir Krause]

I was always taught, the best learning is achieved at about 70% success rate.

Too high success rate indicates one is not facing any difficulty, and is not learning to improve beyond his current ability.

Too low success rate does not leave sufficient good examples to follow.

(I did not vote because such an option is missing in the poll)

Amir

[L. Camejo]

Failure.

It promotes a deeper evaluation of self and technique using results that are difficult to ignore.

[SeiserL]

Success tells you what you already know and how far we have come.
Failure tells you what you have yet to learn and how far we have yet to go..
IMHO, they are equally important.
The discipline to train is how we discover both.

[Robert Gardner]

Success tells you what you already know and how far we have come.
Failure tells you what you have yet to learn and how far we have yet to go..
IMHO, they are equally important.
The discipline to train is how we discover both.

Perfectly said. I've not really been doing Aikido long enough to comment on that side, so I shan't.

However, I am a big believer in life long learning, I am a believer that every situation brings a chance to learn something new, about the world, yourself, your friends, your opinions, the universe as a whole.

In learning, you need both. Success to confirm your doing it right, to see your progress, and simply for positive reinforcement. Failure to teach you humility, to see further avenues to learn, and as you said, to see where you have yet to go.

In my opinion, you do not learn from constant failure, I know you should leave your ego off the mat, but its very much a trueism in my experience that constant failure serves to reinforce negative self image, which is in and of itself a barrier to learning.

Its also my belief that constant success is a barrier to learning. Firstly, it means you are not being challenged, this induces boredom, which, much like negative self image, is a barrier to learning. Not only does it produce boredom, but can also inflate the ego, producing arrogance, which is a barrier to learning through the belief that "you know better".

I think to truelly learn you need enough success to know your progressing, and enough failure to know you have things to still learn. Never enough success to breed arrogance or boredom, never enough failure to create negative self image. You must also be careful not to overwhelm. "I still have things to learn" can easily become the learner staring at a great mountain, unable to climb through fear of falling.

Ofcourse, without Discipline and Motivation, all of this falls by the way side, and even the right balance will fail to teach. I would also wonder whether desire should be factored in. Without desire, much more discipline is required?

Anyway, thats my $0.02.

[bob_stra]

... Now in Judo or in Karate or in Aikido, the problem is simple. The problem is only whether you have a good teacher or a bad teacher. A good teacher will prepare you. He will give you three opponents, for instance, for a first degree black-belt grading test.

The teacher will present the student with an orange-belt, a blue-belt, a green-belt to beat and if he does that efficiently, not by mucking about three hours … But if he in three minutes beats every one of the lower belts, which means he is superior to those people in skilI, the teacher will take one brown-belt, not one of the best, but a brown-belt, and have the student try his skilI.

And if he can in a short time defeat this other brown reIt too, then he will have no hesitation of promoting him. And the incredible thing that happens is that once he is promoted, the first time he puts on his black-belt, he can beat any of those people that he previously had to compete with in a quarter of the time and do it regularly. The fact that he has been publicly acknowledged to have made the grade creates in him his own self-assurance. He has grown in his own eyes and he now has greater liberty to judge the opponent and see whether he can beat him or not.

He doesn't compete any more with those whom he previously had to struggle with. He beats them. So he must certainly be a higher grade. Now if the teacher is good, he brings the person to a level of skill and self-assurance so that when he puts him to the test, he has a great chance of succeeding.

The bad teacher will just put him to the trial, in a contest, and if he is beaten by a blue-belt or a green-belt, it will take him another year or two before he can win a contest again with the same Iow-grade belts. Because he is doubting his movement now. Therefore he is stiff, he is not free to move, his movements become much slower, much jerkier, too late, always hesitating. “Should I do it, shouldn't I do it? Is it a good time? I don't want to fail again.” Like you saw Frazier in the last bouts he had. He lost though he wasinfinitely better than his opponent. He lost only because he was beaten before in earlier fights, because they knocked out of him the idea that he can win.

..

[Marie Noelle Fequiere]

I totally agree with Lynn. Ask any instructors of martial arts, dance, music, graphic arts, you name it, and they will all tell you horror stories of students who were fantastically gifted, and quit out of boredom.
Of course, plenty of students also quit because they think that they will never improve.
And, of course, both categories of quitters are wrong.
Let me tell you what has kept me in the martial arts world for almost fifteen years now: stubbornness.
;)

[Will Prusner]

Sometimes a failure is a success, and vice-versa. I don't see them as existing independently. Yin/Yang. I didn't vote because there isn't an option for both, equally.

W.

[James Davis]

Success, and new goals; Failure, and reassurance. My teacher helps me a great deal.

[Neil Mick]

I was always taught, the best learning is achieved at about 70% success rate.

Too high success rate indicates one is not facing any difficulty, and is not learning to improve beyond his current ability.

Too low success rate does not leave sufficient good examples to follow.

(I did not vote because such an option is missing in the poll)

Amir

Yes, I agree. Sucess and failure are equally important. One without the other makes it impossible to progress, which is why I didn't vote, either.

Interesting question, tho. And, I like Mark Uttech's response! :cool:

[Steve Morabito]

I agree that a balance between success and failure need to be considered, but I arrived at that conclusion in a different way.
One could argue that the number one reason a person (especially a beginner) does not learn effectively is because they drop out, stop training, or otherwise quit. To keep training is the key to learning effectively. I believe that positive reinforcement (an instructor pointing out success) is very important to keep a beginner coming back to train. Think of it this way: If you are going to teach an 8-year old how to play tennis, you would make hitting the ball easy for them at first so they enjoy it and want to continue to get better. After some time, you would certainly need to hit the ball a little faster at times to challenge them.
So my conclusion is this: for the beginner it's all about success: "I seem to be pretty good at this, so I'm going to stick with it." As time goes by, the longer we train and are committed to training, noting failure becomes more important to learning effectively: "I know I need to improve on this particular aspect and I am committed to the challenge."
As our practice changes so do our egos and learning styles.
Steve

[Basia Halliop]

I was always taught, the best learning is achieved at about 70% success rate.

Too high success rate indicates one is not facing any difficulty, and is not learning to improve beyond his current ability.

Too low success rate does not leave sufficient good examples to follow.

(I did not vote because such an option is missing in the poll).

What Amir said!

It corresponds both with what I understand from the research on learning done in both humans and animals, as well as my own experience. NO or very rare failure and you're likely not doing anything you don't already know, there is no pushing of the boundaries, no impetus to reach higher, no signal to point out things you shouldn't do. But beyond a certain amount you're just diligently practicing failure over and over again (and practice makes permanent...) -- which teaches humility and all that, but most of us want to learn something beyond just humility.

No or rare success and there is no signal to point out which things to keep doing -- we learn new things fastest when there is a clear contrast of results where sometimes the results are positive and sometimes not, so that we can constantly compare the two and increase the things that led to success vs. the things that led to failure. Without having both so you can compare (especially on a more automatic reflex level, but also consciously) the results from different courses of action, your brain doesn't really have enough information to know which direction to go next. That's why I would say you can't vote on one or the other, because their relevence comes from the comparison of the two.